SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER

The Best Songs That Sound Like Snow

As New Yorkers, our actual experience of snow is usually of matted clumps on the sidewalk that salt has yet to destroy, or of curbside stacks of bus-exhausted gray yet to melt in below-freezing January highs. But in its Platonic form, snow is different: its mention conjures in us images of falling flakes streaked with moonlight, of undriven fields of white, of horse-drawn carriages and children sledding down steep hills. This is what snow feels like in the abstract, and thus what it has sounded like when composers have tried to evoke its presence in the ultimate abstract expression—music. Here are several pieces to form the perfect soundtrack to a snowy morning such as ours.